Dicky Bill; Amcor/Orora; 24.9933

Tahirih McLeod of Dicky Bill provides some background for the carton and the farm: The story behind the echidna is basically that we were wanting to create a logo/character that was easily recognised as being Australian, but with a cheeky nature. Kangaroos and koalas are often featured, so we wanted to be different. Thus the echidna. We used to have farming country and our head office in Stanthorpe (up until 3 years ago). Susan Scanlan was one of our main administration staff, and her son basically drew the original echidna free hand. This was then forwarded to the design crew to turn into our boxes and logo.
We are currently looking to redo our boxes, with the logo as per my signature below. This echidna was designed by a free lance agent.

We have farming country in both Gin Gin Qld, and Maffra Vic. My husband and I moved to Gin Gin in 2010, after extensive searching for adequate water and soil type, moving the farming from Lower Wonga near Gympie, where we were both land and water locked (lack of both), allowing us a much bigger scope for farming. The property we purchased near Gin Gin was originally a sugar cane and citrus farm. It took extensive works to convert it into the salad farm it is today. We have approx. 500 acres of solid set irrigation (lots of trenches to install) connecting into the IWS mains (Irrigation Water Scheme) underground, installed in the height of the sugar industry boom. Our irrigation comes directly from Paradise Dam and the mains service the entire farming district. We were affected by the 2010/2011 floods, but moreover, the majority of the farm went approx. 1m under water in the 2013 floods. Thankfully summer is our off season for salad, so crops were not damaged, but extensive top soil erosion was experienced, and the clean up of workshops etc was hard work. We had neighbouring farms/close friends, whose citrus farm suffered major damage, flood waters rose into their house, 1000s of trees were uprooted and their entire new blueberry crop washed away, so we consider ourselves very lucky.
At this stage we were also still farming several small properties in the Stanthorpe/Warwick region, relying on them to cover our Summer supply. However, the area is well known for its Summer storms, and we were constantly being hammered by storms and hail, which as you can imagine don’t mix well with salad leaves grown in an open paddock. So finally we decided it was time to find a reliable Summer growing farm. Thus the move of my husbands business partner, Hugh Reardon, to Maffra Victoria in July 2012. Once again, extensive research and visits before choosing the site. There is a short video on our facebook page relating to the search and transformation of the Maffra farm.

So basically, both locations give us additional security against the elements, due to the geographical distance. Maffra is primarily our Summer growing region (as Qld is too hot for salad over summer – shelf life significantly diminished when grown in hot climate) and Gin Gin is our winter growing region (as Maffra is generally too cold and the salad takes a lot longer to grow in cold conditions.)

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